Security, access control and privacy are important issues in many venues throughout modem society. Government, commercial and private entities continue to seek effective means to control access to either property or information by authorized individuals while excluding access by all others.
Mechanical devices, as simple as a keyed padlock or as robust as the combination lock on a bank vault, have long been used to secure property. Access is allowed to all who possess a matching “key” device or have “knowledge” of the correct combination. Electronic key cards (swipe cards, chip cards and the like) are little more than modern keys and suffer from the same fundamental limitations of all key based security systems: keys can be lost, stolen, and duplicated. Further, keys do not identify the individual possessing and/or using the key.
Modern knowledge based security systems require the correct entry of specific information, into a data entry device, in order to control access. These systems generally require knowledge of an access code that has been selected by a user or has been preset by the system during the user enrollment process. Password protection is commonly employed for computer network security, telephone banking, calling cards, telephone answering services, buildings, and safes. A very effective synergy between key based and knowledge based security systems is typified by the use of swipe cards in combination with passwords in order to provide access to automatic teller machines.
Knowledge based security systems suffer from the same fundamental limitations as combination lock systems: the information that must be provided to the data entry device must be simple; the required knowledge must be concise and easy to remember, and, just as with key systems, knowledge based security systems do not unambiguously identify the individual entering the information.
Complementing the proliferation of computers and computer networks into all aspects of business and daily life is the growing concern over controlled access to information stored in electronic databases.
Short strings of alphanumeric characters, typically less than ten in number, characterize most password protected systems. A word, phrase or number combination familiar to the user is often selected during the user enrollment process. Randomly assigned codes are often forgotten, as users have no reliable method of remembering them. Writing down the codes and storing them in close proximity to an access control device (i.e., the combination lock) results in a secure access control system with a very insecure code. Alternatively, the nuisance of a user making several attempts to enter variations of a complicated code, or lengthy string of characters, renders the access control system more of a problem than a solution.
A security access system that provides substantially secure access control, and is not based on either a key device or user knowledge, is a biometric identification system. A biometric identification system accepts biometric information from a user of the system and attempts to identify and control access by the user by matching the provided information against information belonging to registered users of the system. Biometric information is derived from an anatomic structure of an individual and, as such, is derived from the unique genetic content and the sum of the environmental influences on that individual. One such biometric identification system is a fingerprint recognition system.